Post by 10mcope on Oct 22, 2014 23:58:52 GMT
My favorite book is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. This is my interpretation of the story that undoubtedly changed my outlook about the way in which I live my life and the way we live and interact as people.
The novel is set on a made-up island off the coast of Italy during the second world war, where an American bombing group is stationed. Desperate to impress his superiors, Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions his men have to fly. Our hero, Yossarian, has flown 50. Driven half-mad by his will to live, he wants out. But he's thwarted by Catch-22, a clause which states that pilots don't have to fly if they are certified as insane, but that being driven mad by fear is fundamentally rational. As it's described in the novel: "Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to." The result, put simply, is that no one can get off the ride.
It’s hard to describe briefly just how enveloping, and extraordinarily hilarious this logic becomes as the novel unfolds. Its core paradox – that insanity is sanity – burrows inside everything. The power of Catch-22, for me, is the way in which it plunges into that emptiness at the end of the novel, when the source of its comedy is finally revealed. Throughout, the novel's comic surface has been punctured by shards of Yossarian's traumatic memories of a bombing raid in which a young, enlisted solider bled to death from flak wounds. But it's only near the end, when Yossarian finally gives in and reflects fully on the episode – its gruesome details and savage lack of meaning – that the novel is transposed into a tragic key. Sure, it's been funny. But all along the comedy has been an expression of horror; it springs from outraged, stupefied humanity. There seems to be something up for grabs in Catch-22's circular logic – where madness begets laughter, and laughter begets madness.
The novel is set on a made-up island off the coast of Italy during the second world war, where an American bombing group is stationed. Desperate to impress his superiors, Colonel Cathcart keeps raising the number of missions his men have to fly. Our hero, Yossarian, has flown 50. Driven half-mad by his will to live, he wants out. But he's thwarted by Catch-22, a clause which states that pilots don't have to fly if they are certified as insane, but that being driven mad by fear is fundamentally rational. As it's described in the novel: "Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to." The result, put simply, is that no one can get off the ride.
It’s hard to describe briefly just how enveloping, and extraordinarily hilarious this logic becomes as the novel unfolds. Its core paradox – that insanity is sanity – burrows inside everything. The power of Catch-22, for me, is the way in which it plunges into that emptiness at the end of the novel, when the source of its comedy is finally revealed. Throughout, the novel's comic surface has been punctured by shards of Yossarian's traumatic memories of a bombing raid in which a young, enlisted solider bled to death from flak wounds. But it's only near the end, when Yossarian finally gives in and reflects fully on the episode – its gruesome details and savage lack of meaning – that the novel is transposed into a tragic key. Sure, it's been funny. But all along the comedy has been an expression of horror; it springs from outraged, stupefied humanity. There seems to be something up for grabs in Catch-22's circular logic – where madness begets laughter, and laughter begets madness.